>> ifill: screening for ebola ramps up at u.s. airports as lawmakers question health officials over mistakes made in dallas and what to do to stop the virus from spreading.

good evening, i'm gwen ifill. and i'm judy woodruff. also ahead this thursday, hbo decides to cut the cord and let consumers pay for streaming content without a cable subscription. >> ifill: with record numbers of homeless teens enrolled in america's public schools, one student defies the odds to become high school valedictorian and enroll at tone of the most prestigious universities in the country. >> i still see that picture in my head of me having my own house and you know having my degrees on the wall, having a job to go to from 9:00 to 5:00, having a consistent paycheck, paying my own bills and just being the woman that i always wanted to be. >> woodruff: plus, fifty years after the free speech movement began in berkeley, california, activists and students try to keep the past alive and relate it to the present. >> woodruff: those are some of the stories we're covering on tonight's pbs newshour. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: >> supported by the john d. and catherine t. macarthur foundation. committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. more information at macfound.org

>> and with the ongoing support of these institutions and... >> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> ifill: major federal health agencies were called to account today for mistakes in handling ebola. lawmakers from both parties fired off criticism and questions, at a hearing in washington. >> people's lives are at stake, and the response so far has been unacceptable. >> ifill: growing anxiety over the prospect of ebola's spread in the u.s. brought a house committee back from campaigning and put the nation's top health officials on the firing line. michigan republican fred upton. >> we're going to hold your feet to the fire on getting the job done and getting it done right. both the u.s. and the global health community have so far failed to put in place an effective strategy fast enough

to combat the current outbreak. >> ifill: the complaints were bi-partisan. democrat diana deguette of colorado. >> it would be an understatement to say that the response to the first u.s.-based patient with ebola has been mismanaged, causing risk to scores of additional people. >> ifill: the hearing came amid suggestions from house speaker john boehner and others that limits be placed on travelers coming into the country from west africa, where thousands have died of ebola. republican tim murphy of pennsylvania chaired the hearing. >> this is the question the american public is asking, why are we still allowing folks to come over here and why, once they're over here, is there no quarantine? >> ifill: but the head of the centers for disease control dr. tom frieden argued a travel ban could backfire. >> if people were to come in by, for example, going overland to another country and then entering without our knowing that they were from these three countries, we would actually

lose that information. >> ifill: at the white house, a spokesman said banning travel is not under consideration. but passenger screenings have started at major international airports in atlanta, chicago, newark, new jersey and washington. the process includes taking temperatures and handing out questionnaires to travelers from guinea, sierra leone and liberia. at washington dulles airport, some passengers felt reassured some less so. >> any screening in or out, i'm all for, whether it's security for terrorism or it's issues obviously i don't want anything brought in. >> i don't know how effective they'll be, quite honestly, because you know where you're coming from, but you don't know where you've been before. >> ifill: in dallas, questions continued about how two nurses got infected after treating a liberian man, thomas eric duncan, who died of ebola at texas health presbyterian hospital. a top hospital official appeared

at today's congressional hearing. >> unfortunately, in our initial treatment of mr. duncan, despite our best intentions and a highly skilled medical team, we made mistakes. we did not correctly diagnose his symptoms as those of ebola. we are deeply sorry. >> ifill: one of the nurses, 29- year-old amber vinson has now been moved to emory university hospital in atlanta. the other nurse, nina pham, is being sent to the national institutes of health in bethesda, maryland. later, the white house announced president obama has authorized a call up of national guard and reserve troops if needed to help deal with the outbreak in west africa. we'll have more on the response to the ebola threat after the news summary. >> woodruff: the head of the transportation security administration, john pistole, announced his retirement today, effective at the end of the year.

pistole has led the agency since 2010. he's drawn fire for the use of full-body scans and pat downs, but the trusted traveler program has won praise for speeding low-risk passengers through screening. >> ifill: wall street managed to stave off another big slide. the dow jones industrial average was down 200 at one point, but ended with a loss of just 24 points, to close at 16,117; the nasdaq rose two points to close at 4,217; and the s&p 500 gained a fraction, to 1,862. >> woodruff: in syria, fresh reports from the besieged town of kobani said kurdish fighters have gone on the offensive against islamic state militants. the turnabout came as coalition planes carried out a new wave of air strikes in the town near the turkish border. kurdish officials also appealed again for bigger and better arms. >> some weaponry which are more effective against the heavy weaponry of isis: tanks,

cannons, mortars, armoured vehicles and humvee. we need this weaponry. we have just simple weaponry like doshka, automatic guns. and they are not enough to destroy isis on the ground. >> woodruff: syrian activists said today nearly 700 people have died in the battle for kobani. >> ifill: a wave of attacks in baghdad has claimed at least 50 more lives as islamic state forces seek to sow panic in the iraqi capital. bombings and mortar fire rocked mostly shi-ite districts. the worst attack involved a double car bombing that targeted iraqi soldiers and shiite militiamen. >> woodruff: hong kong's leader, leung chun-ying appealed again today for protesters to end sit-ins that have paralyzed parts of the city. he offered to hold talks next week, but demonstrators stayed in the streets through the night. they are demanding free elections, but the mainland chinese government has insisted on screening candidates first. >> ifill: search teams in nepal

have found more bodies after a series of blizzards and avalanches in the himalayas. the death toll rose to at least 27 today. rescuers also found 64 more foreign hikers who'd been stranded. but about 70 people are still missing, some 100 miles northwest of katmandu. >> woodruff: hurricane gonzalo barreled closer to bermuda today with winds of 145 miles-an-hour forcing the island's international airport to close. satellite imagery captured the storm, slowly plowing north in the atlantic. forecasters said the eye could pass within 30 miles of bermuda tomorrow night. >> ifill: and in california, some ten million californians took part in a major, annual drill to prepare for the next big earthquake. the great shake-out instructs people how to drop, cover and hold. emergency responders had their

own full-scale exercise. >> ifill: and in california, some ten million californians >> the director of the f.b.i., james comey, stepped up his warnings today new efforts to protect user information will impede criminal investigations. it may be dispawld suspects could go free. >> woodruff: still to come on the newshour. how afraid should we be about ebola? hbo's plans to cut the cord from cable. a divisive culture war in the world of video games. one teen's mission to support high school students who are homeless. campus activism fifty years after the free speech movement. and africa's untold stories of hope and promise. >> ifill: late today, the centers for disease control reported that it is expanding its ebola investigation to include passengers on a second flight flown by one of the

nurses since diagnosed with the disease. as new details emerge, and as today's congressional hearing showed, domestic concerns over ebola are skyrocketing. a new reuters/ipsos poll finds 41% are "very concerned" about the outbreak. 36% are "somewhat concerned." and 45% say they are avoiding international travel. a separate poll by the harvard school of public health found that more than half of adults are concerned that there will be a large outbreak of ebola inside the u.s. within the next 12 months. it's a good time to ask, how worried should we be? and how should we assess any level of risk? we turn to dr. eden wells, a professor of epidemiology at the university of michigan. and valerie reyna, a professor of human development and psychology at cornell university. welcome to you both. dr. wells, when do we begin to think that this is a legitimate fear and when is it paranoia?

>> that's an excellent question, but one that's difficult to answer in that i think anybody who has a concern has-- is justified to have that concern. and, therefore, we need to address that with good information. paranoia is probably too strong of a term. i would say that the concerns people have after all of the news cycles that we've been seeing in the last week or so, they're coming from my own family, my colleagues, my friends, and in all, at the end of the day, we can say today that this virus has not changed. the risk is still low for those of us that are not involved in health care, like these two heroic nurses that were really intimately involved with the care of mr. duncan, and, unfortunately, became infected. >> ifill: let me follow up with you on one more piece of that, which siwonder to what degree the language matters. when are theesizealate cases and when is it an outbreak?

>> that's a very good question. i would say right now we have two cases that were involved in the direct health care of this patient. we do know that this virus transmits from direct bodily contact with the person or the fluids of that person. an outbreak, in my mind, would really mean if the virus begins to occur beyond what we say is the secondary transmission that we're seeing right now, the fact that these nurses became ill. that if we began to see cases that were occurring in other people in the community, that in my mind would be an outbreak. again, that risk for an outbreak is really very low. this has not changed in what we've been saying about this virus in the past six months. >> ifill: valerie reyna, how do people manage this risk, especially emotionally, psychologically, worrying about the present, worrying about the future? >> there's a great deal of psychological science on this topic, and it's very

understandable that people would be concerned about the risk from an ebola outbreak. people think really in terms of-- in two ways about risk. they think about possibility versus impossibility and,sh, we've gone over that barrier psychologically. people were initially told that transmission was essentially impossible. they were told that in good faith, and then it happened, and it happened twice. so now psychologically people have shifted from this is an impossibility to not only is it a possibility but it's one that's increasing. and the human mind is keenly attuned to change, to increases in risk as well as changes from impossible to possible. >> ifill: is part of the problem as you see it by saying, for instance, in trying to calm the public last week, dr. frieden or dr. fauci saying this will be stopped in the tracks in the united states? was that part of the problem in changing expectations? >> well i'm not sure that that's part of the problem. i think it's good to reassure people that there are measures in place. i think that the human

psychological response to risk has multiple components. it has an emotional compoabt to it, threat and alarm. that threat and alarm can make sense sometimes, and that's where risk communication comes in. whenever we have an epidemic like this or natural disaster or incident that has to do with terrorism, risk communication becomes a key between officials and the public. it's often something we take for granted. it's a kind of invisible force, but it's the kind of thing that cebts the safety of people to the resources that we can bring to bear. >> ifill: dr. wells, how does the risk factor for ebola, as you understand it, compare to other risk factors of other diseases that have caused this kind of great widespread fear? i think of aids in the the early days or sars, or avian flu. >> oh, yes. first off, i'd like to say they absolutely agree with our other speaker here this evening. that was very well said about

risk communication, and we have to address the fact that this is a disease, as ebola has been known sense the mid-1970s, it's a scary-sounding disease. it has a known high fatality rate. it is rather gruesome in how people suffer from it, especially when they become greatly ill, if not die. and this has been in our collective consciousness, if you will, since it was first discovered in 1976. but as it compares in terms of risk, even though this is difficult to communicate because right now everybody is worried because of what we're hearing about the recent news, but as far as risk, when i think about the diseases that we have seen transpire-- hiv, avian influenza, if we think of fast scares-- you know, polio, the spanish flu-- this is less transmissible-- thank goodness-- than many of the diseases that

we speak about. it does require the direct contact with an infected person or their body fluids. so the risk is less than the avian flu. the sars that we've dealt with in the past. but again, we have to be able to relay that risk in a way that people can feel more comforted given that this is a concern, and the recent changes have increased the concern as my fellow speaker said. >> ifill: valerie reyna, briefly, how do you calm the fear without underestimating the risk? >> yes, i think that that's very important. i think that we really have to be open and transparent. we have to explain to people the nature of the transmission. now, this is a very difficult challenge. you have technical information that has to get out to a wide range of people with different kinds of knowledge backgrounds. but that's the challenge of risk communication. there is science available that can facilitate that. people have to know how this happened, why it happened, if

there's uncertainty, and we don't know certain causes we have to be open about that. i think people can be reassured when they're given information. there's elements in here, too, that have to do with trust in government. and i think trust is fostered to the degree that we're candid with people. >> ifill: valerie reyna of cornell university, and dr. eden wells of the university of michigan, thank you both very much. >> thank you, gwen. >> woodruff: if you've been looking for a reason to cut the cord to your traditional cable tv, hbo may have just provided it. the longtime cable giant, producer of shows like "game of thrones" and "true detective," fired a big shot across the media landscape yesterday when it announced it will offer a standalone online streaming service next year. then today, cbs, home to audience favorites like "the good wife," announced a smaller

but similar move of its own. for about six dollars a month, viewers will be able to stream cbs stations live in 14 markets. live sports, however, are not included. it's an important moment for the industry. sharon waxman is the editor in chief of the wrap.com, a news website that covers the business. sharon waxman, welcome. how important a moment is this? >> i think it's one of those pivotal moments where you have hbo, cbs, both announcing streaming services and there was another streaming service announcement, starz, announced international streaming last sunday, and all of this at the same time as netflix announced their earn this is week, which is, of course, the biggest streaming service out there, and their growth has kind of slowed, which is to be expected because they've become this massive company and their shares took a

big hit. surely, there's going to be important new entrance to the streaming marketplace, and they all seem to be these legacy content creators. >> woodruff: why are they doing this and why right now? >> i think they've resisted coming to the digital revolution and adopt ago to bawng, look, any one of these companies, the big media companies probably should have bought netflix five or six or seven years ago when that company was able to be bought. and none of them chose to do that. and that was a discussion that was had within hollywood at that time. and there was a certain presumption that things are going to change a bit but they're to the not going to fundamentally alter the business models that drive the way people consume entertainment. guess what? netflix showed with explosive growth over the past three years that, in fact, people are change the way they consume entertainment, and particularly young people, millennials, kids

in their 20s. are not subscribing to cable. they are not cord cutters. they are cord-97ers. if they use hbo-go now, they're probably using their parents' subscription number to access it. hbo i think so very smartly is ising aislooking at that market. >> woodruff: sport, as we said, live sports, not included but is this the beginning of the end of cable television? >> i think-- well, you know, we announced the beginning of the end of a lot of things here in media and it's turned out to be premature in almost every case. what we're seeing is a variety, a fra fragmentation, is more diversity of ways to consume content on the media landscape. so i don't think it's the end of cable by any means, which is a massive part of the country and most people are still going to

be having cable subscriptions for a really long time. but i do think that it's a significant moment where we're we're start ago where you have the main content creating companies -- cbs, hbo, which is part of time warner. showtime is also looking at this, which, of course, is owned by the cbs, starz-- are starting to understand they have to start monetizing their content directly through digital and not just sell is through threat 96 or hulu, of which fox and nbc are owners. it's a streaming company that is again an intermediary, and not them directly providing their content to consumers. >> woodruff: just quickly, what do you think the main changes are going to be for consumers? >> i think again it's going to be a diversity of choices. they're going to have a broad array of choices. they can decide whether they're

going to go a la carte on cable air, great big cable package, or whether they're just gog have their laptop and a device that will if you have been to their big screen tv because there are lots of different ways to do that now, and just choose individually what their entertainment choices are going to be, and increasingly, the i think the a la carte way is where people are going to be getting their entertainment and not just embracing a single model, a single cable package. that's where i think we're going. >> woodruff: sharon waxman with the wrap.com. we thank you. >> thanks, judy. >> ifill: next, gamer-gate. it's a story about sexism in the world of video gaming with all the elements of a hollywood script, romance gone bad, alleged corruption and ultimately, death threats against women who speak out. a warning: some of the images may be disturbing to some viewers.

>> these women and their bodies are sacrificed in the name of infusing mature themes into gaming stories. but there is nothing mature about flippantly evoking shades of female trauma. >> sreenivasan: in her video blog series, feminist critic anita sarkeesian has condemned stereotypes and abuse of women in video games, such as "dragon age: origins". >> let go of me, stop, please! >> it's a party isn't it? grab a whore and have a good time ( laughs ) >> sreenivasan: in other games, depictions of women are simply too graphic to show on television. >> it ends up sensationalizing an issue which is painfully familiar to a large percentage of women on this planet while also normalizing and trivializing their experiences. >> sreenivasan: sarkeesian, in turn, has drawn heavy criticism from some gamers, and even threats of violence that led her to cancel a speech at utah state university. but sarkeesian's case is only one part of a broader online assault on women in the gaming industry in recent months. it goes back to august, when an

ex-boyfriend of video game designer zoe quinn posted an online blog. in it he accused quinn of sleeping with a reporter to get a positive review on one of her games. that sparked a campaign that came to be dubbed gamer-gate, highlighting perceived corruption among video game journalists. from there, gamer-gate has grown to include outright harassment of women like quinn and sarkeensian who work in or critique the industry. threats on twitter even forced brianna wu, another game developer, to leave her boston- area home after her address was made public. now, another campaign "stop gamer gate 2014" is trending. it calls for the harassment to end. and brianna wu joins me now to talk about these issues and the problem of harassment. she is owner and head of development at giant spacekat, one of the country's few female- owned video game studios. brianna, our audience is not nearly as connected to gaming as you are, and it seems gamer-gate

has different definitions for different people. how do you define it? >> i think very generally speaking gamer-gate is a war on women in this industry. you know, obsensibly, it's about journalistic corruption. but if you actually look at who's being targeted, it is almost all women. they've gone after my friends in the industry one by one. they took out samantha allen by the exact same playbook they took zoe quinn by. they've gone after matty bryce, leigh alexander. they've gone after anita sarkeesian, and now they're after me. so it's really reached a point where women-- yeah? >> sreenivasan: tell us about the playbook. what is the playbook and what have you been living through in the past few days? >> it's literally been the worst thing i've ever experienced in my life. the idea is to basically terrorize women in the game industry. so it doesn't just stop with rape threats or death threats, which, sadly, being a woman in this field, i've been dealing

with for a while now. you know, it's literally escalated to the point that i've had to get the f.b.i. involved. i've had to get local police involved to hunt these people down. they have targeted my financial assets of my company. you know, they have set up fake accounts to impersonate me online with me saying just horrible, horribly discriminating things against people in an effort to destroy my professional reputation. you know, they've actually set up burner accounts with fake stories about my life and have sent them to prominent journalists who, frankly, just slandered me behind the scenes. so it is ever single tactic they can use to terrorize women in this field and get us to be quiet. >> sreenivasan: is this a possibly maturing moment for the industry? i mean, what had been tolerated as pureile and juvenile behavior by a group of young boys playing on the internet or as artistic expression, i mean, is this a moment where people start to

rethink the impact? >> i deeply hope so. you know, one of the most frustrating things about this entire ordeal is the video game industry is overwhelmingly male. the developers are overwhelmingly male and game journalists are overwhelmingly male. is it what you've had it the overwhelmingly male games press has sat completely silent throughout much of this. the women i know in this field have been suffering because they just don't want to get involved. but it's really reached a boiling point. this week. and you saw patrick cleppic finally comeed for. i think people are finally starting to take notice that this isn't something we can just ignore any longer. >> sreenivasan: one group that did take notice, intel. they are withdrawing their support for a particular gaming site. does that help or hurt getting visibility to this and having economic consequences occur?

>> it devastates us. they were going after my friend, leigh alexander's job with that. so what you have are these-- these people that terrorize anyone that speaks out about what's happening to women, just like leigh did, and they tried to get her fired. they went after her employer's advertisers. it's a literal mob that will stop and do anything in their power to silence women in this field. >> sreenivasan: brianna wu, thank you so much for your time. >> woodruff: the department of education recently released data that showed there were more than 1.2 million homeless students enrolled in public schools last year, the highest ever. as the nation's educators continue to struggle with the problem, the newshour's april brown tells the story of one washington d.c. teenager who defied the odds and may well inspire other kids in similar

situations. this story is another in our "american graduate" series funded by the corporation for public broadcasting. >> reporter: in many ways, rashema melson is a typical georgetown university freshman. she graduated top of her high- school class last year and now makes it a point to come early everyday so she can sit in the front row. but rashema's path toward success has not been an easy one. her father was killed when she was seven-months-old and she spent much of the last three years in a washington d.c. homeless shelter with her mother and two brothers. facts that she kept mostly secret while in high-school. >> it was nobody's business, and i didn't want to be pitied, i didn't want to be looked down upon as if i couldn't do it because you know i'm a strong person. >> she was always smiling very bubbly, very friendly. >> reporter: one person she eventually told was anacostia high-school teacher chisa perry

who was rashema's track and field coach. but for a long time she never knew either and perry says regardless of what was happening at home rashema always remained upbeat and focused at school. >> the best way to describe rashema would be determined, anything she sets her mind to she'll do it. >> reporter: that grit and determination was on display last june as the 18-year-old gave her valedictorian speech at anacostia high, a school that sits in the poorest section of washington. >> life is not fair but despite that harsh reality you must keep striving for success. >> reporter: rashema began taking classes at georgetown this summer after receiving a full scholarship to the nation's oldest catholic university. she moved out of the homeless shelter and into student housing. the homeless shelter that rashema spent her last few years of high-school is only a few miles from georgetown but the atmosphere could hardly be more

different that's why she spent five weeks of her vacation here in a program designed to ease the transition. >> schools like georgetown, elite schools, sometimes we need to remind ourselves that terrific students can be found anywhere and to give ourselves the mechanism, the means to find them and bring them in and make sure that they are okay and that's what this program does. >> reporter: dennis williams, the associate dean of students at georgetown, runs the summer bridge program that rashema was a part of. known as community scholars the program offers first generation college students personal support for all four years while at the university. williams says rashema has become the poster child for this type of opportunity and is thus far adjusting well academically. but he warns for students like rashema, the adjustment that can take longer comes outside of the classroom. >> what's unusual in rashema's case is that she is local and so

that she is from a part of the city that most georgetown students know very little about and that the part of the city where her high school is most of the people in that neighborhood know very little bit about georgetown so it really is two separate worlds within the same city. >> reporter: rashema is taking the transition in stride and is skeptical label that many have already given her: role model. >> when people say i'm a role model, i don't mind, i just don't want anyone to be like oh my gosh she did that or you know she has tattoo because i'm going to be my own self and i'm going to be my person that i want to be and it's my life that i'm living. >> reporter: despite the fact her story has spread across the nation rashema says she hasn't been paying much attention to the media coverage.

>> i still see that picture in my head of me having my own house and you know having my degrees on the wall, having a job to go to from 9:00 to 5:00, having a consistent paycheck, paying my own bills and just being the woman that i always wanted to be. >> reporter: rashema says she has also started a scholarship foundation that she hopes will one day help students like herself. >> ifill: now to one military family's painful battle with death and depression. jeffrey brown has more. >> sreenivasan: tw>> brown: twod within months of one another, one in combat in iraq and the other sued. they were the children of carol and then coral, now retired major general, mark graham. this is a story of pain and trauma within the u.s. military is told in the new book "the

ipvisible front-- love and loss in an era of endless war." the author joins us now. welcome to you. >> thank you. >> brown: it is the different responses that is kind of the starting point and a way into the the larger story you tell, right? >> that's right. when jeff graham died, he was treated as a hero, the state legislature had the flags at half-mast. they passed a resolution in his honor. thousands of people lined the road to the cemetery, full military funeral. kevin, his younger brother, who killed himself, there was nothing. the family thought this was a sin, he took his own life. to mark and carol, it was as if kevin's life and death never happened the way they were seen by the public, people pretended kevin never existed whereas jeff was a hero given every possible honor. >> announcer: the hero we know how to deal with. the suicide altogether something

different. >> we don't know whether to think of them as weak, as wounded, as flawed, as sick. we as a society don't know that. we as a military don't know that, either. >> brown: kevin was in r.o.t.c. at that point and had gotten off his antidepressant drugs because he thought he would be seen as weak if he was on them. >> that's exactly right. he was about to be commissioned into army. his feeling was if they tested him and found he was taking prozac-- which he was then take ago his career would end there and then. his father at that point had been in the military for 20 years. they saw that kind of service as the highest possible service you could do, and to them the army was all and he thought i won't make it to the army. they'll kick me out. i'll embarrass my family. my career will end. >> brown: the parents fall into a spiral of grief,sh, losing two sons in a short time, but then they realize they have to do something positive or something has to come out of this. and the father is in a position to do something, although as a

military man he's been part of this culture, right? >> that's right. he's been part of this macho culture which says if you are feeling depressed if you come back from war different are you're flawed. you're not worthy of the wearing the individual. >> brown: it has to be you. you can't be a military man. >> it's you the individual soldier who is flawed. we're not doing anything wrong. for a long time the suicide rate in the military was lower than the civilian world. and the military would say, yes, we have suicides but civil jans more of them. 2009 was the year that passed. that was the year more soldiers by percentage killed themselves than civilians did. mark was in command at fort carson in colorado with one of the hieftd suicide rates. what he did there at many ways is kind of the heart of book. >> announcer: this is something we have covered a lot on the program and you have covered before the book. why this sort of epidemic of suicide?

do we know why it's snapped even within this culture in which it is so stigmatized, the idea of being depressed or weak, if you use that word. >> we think about p.t.s.d, that ceend of shock has existed since humans went to war. the feeling if you commit violence, you're changed. if you see violence, you're changed. now you have people serving two, three, four, five tours, where the people they're killing are often dressed like civilians and that takes aole. when you're living in iraq and all you hear are explosion one after the other after the other, that takes a toll. the other different is a physical injury, traumatic brain injury, t.b.i. p.t.s.d. and t.b.i. are linked. this war is marked by explosions, marked by trauma to the head and brain. you have the combination of multiple tours, the combination of injuries to the head, leading to suicide. >> brown: you said mark graham, the father, as you tell in the story, he was able to

take some action at fort carson. what specifically did he do and what kind of impact do you think it has had on the military? >> the first thing he did will seem like an obvious thing but it wasn't. he told his own story. and when he talked about his sonsz-- >> brown: let me stop there there, because it does seem obvious. why is it not obvious? >> it's so rare, as you know, in the military to see generals show emotion. you just don't see it. and when he first got to fort carson he called in the officers beneath him, talke about his tws and started to cry and some of the people i spoke to for the book said they'd never seen that before. they'd never seen a general cry. and generals were always afraid of being seen themselves as weak or soft. when mark graham spoke about his sons, he was a father first and general second and they hadn't seen that. that was a bit of a cultural change. in terms of the base, one change was picking a doctor assigned to a unit the issue was oftentimes, a soldier would come back, sit

across from a civilian psychologist and people how could this man possibly understand what i've been through. how can i open up to him. how i can talk to him. >> brown: finally, part of this is personal for you. you experienced p.t.s.d. yourself. >> when i came back, i would have flashes of anger. if i was asleep and heard a noise i would wake up immediately and not be able to fall asleep. i had very vivid nightmares. at the time i thought i'm a tough guy and i'll deal with it on my own and it took a while until a military friend said, you have p.t.s.d., not as a question and i started take counseling and medication. but kind of issues mark has wrestled with, where in the military culture people are afraid to say i need help. i'm not strong enough to deal with this on my own. i faced that. i went through it, and fihadn't had gotten the help my life would have been very, very different and i'm grateful i did. >> brown: "the invisible front, love and loss in the era of an invisible war."

thank you very much. >> thank you. >> woodruff: now, a look back at a movement some historians believe profoundly changed american culture, politics and education. newshour special correspondent spencer michels reports has the story. >> reporter: we're gonna start off by playing a little speech some of you may remember. >> let me tell you something the faculty is a bunch of employees and we're the raw material. >> reporter: the sounds of a familiar past blared over sproul plaza, on the campus of the university of california at berkeley. the voice, from 1964 was that of the late mario savio the most famous leader of the free speech movement, the first big on- campus student movement in the country. >> you've got to put your bodies on the gear, upon the wheels and the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop! >> reporter: these were twenty-

somethings in the 60's. civil rights activists who were protesting a university policy forbidding political activity on campus. now, they were back to keep the past alive and relate it to the present. >> the most significant student movement of our era is taking place in hong kong. ( applause ) >> reporter: graduate student jack weinberg sparked the rebellion 50 years ago when he was arrested for refusing to take down an organizing table. >> they made the mistake of bringing a police car onto campus. this give me five, ten minutes to standup, to draw a crowd, make a speech. >> reporter: weinberg spent 32 hours in the car as the crowds swelled to 6,000 and the movement was born. it achieved its goals, the university eventually eliminated the restrictions on political activity. >> it was a turning point and sort of helped set the stage for what became the anti-vietnam war movement.

women's equality, other liberation movements were all sort of set in motion by the activities in berkeley in 1964. for years the university tried to downplay what happened here in 1964 and after. the administration wanted no part of the 25th anniversary of the free speech movement. >> fifty years ago today... >> reporter: but today, the university has embraced the free speech movement as its own. in 1997 the administration even named the steps on sproul plaza after mario savio, whom it expelled in the 60's. his widow, lynn hollander savio took part in the movement as well. >> reporter: the free speech movement had very limited goals, it was totally non violent and it had a very high level of intellectual discourse. >> reporter: today, students flock to the on-campus free

speech movement cafe, where they essentially ignore the reminders of the past that surround them. in sproul plaza, where the movement began, a few tables some political. some selling donuts try to attract a share of the 35,000 students who attend berkeley. for the most part the students skirt the tables on their way to class and to careers. but this semester even for them it was hard to ignore the events of 50 years ago. >> sure we have free speech, but no one is listening. >> reporter: in dozens of classes this semester, students are studying the free speech movement reading a biography of savio, trying to find its relevance to the present. >> the whole ability to exercise your free speech in the occupy movement is because of what mario savio and the others were doing for the free speech movement in the 60's. >> our main issue is the ubiquity of free speech, too many voices drowning out any

actual message. >> reporter: visiting professor robert cohen who wrote savio's biography is teaching 80 students about the movement. >> you read a bunch of mario's speeches, and also reagan's speech. >> reporter: he brought a group of former free speech members to his class. >> we were called communist dupes. that was the big expression: dupes. >> reporter: cohen is convinced that ronald reagan, who ran for california governor in 1966, attacked the free speech movement to garner votes. >> it began a year ago when the so called free speech advocates, who have no regard for free speech were allowed to assault the symbol of law and order on the campus and that was the moment when the ringleaders should have been taken by the scruff of the neck and thrown out of the university once and for all. >> reporter: the electorate in california was so hostile to the

student movement, people saw this as like disorder and chaotic and disobedience, and the administration is being too permissive. a few of those who took part in demonstrations years ago have turned their backs on the movement or what it became, and are speaking out on the anniversary. in new york conservative writer sol stern who was a radical in 1964 wrote articles this fall calling the f.s.m. the "unfree speech movement." >> it was free speech for our views, but not free speech for your views. the movement should have been over, but it just branched out into all sorts of other radical objectives. >> reporter: john searle, as a graduate student, helped lead protestors in a march through the campus. today, at 82, he is a well-known philosophy professor at berkeley. >> we created a model for what people thought they should do on a university, and that's a big mistake, to think the way to change, the way to run the university is through mass demonstrations. >> reporter: large-scale demonstrations have mostly faded

on this campus and elsewhere. instead, some students use a different kind of activism. caitlin quinn is vice president of the associated students. >> i think the way we've perceived campus activism has definitely changed, it takes on a lot of different forms now, there are a lot more social media campaigns, there are a lot more online petitions and kind of more tech-driven social activism. >> reporter: anthropology graduation students analyzed why today's students aren't as active as their predecessors, even if they want to be. >> many students have a lot to lose, and they don't have much of a buffer to fall back on. they are taking out a huge amount of loan to stay in college. so in a sense they have to be careerists, and that stifles freedom of speech. >> reporter: the free speech movement anniversary rally drew just a few hundred onlookers. but word of the old movement's resurrection and new respectability doesn't obscure the fact that what came down

here in 1964 remains a point of contention. >> ifill: finally tonight, amid terror and tragedy in africa, another side of the continent that we see less often told through its writers. jeffrey brown is back with a report from his recent trip to kenya. >> brown: a lovely fall day on the grounds of nairobi national museum in kenya, and the sixth annual storymoja festival is in full swing. storymoja, the name means "one story," is a four-day celebration of books and ideas bringing thousands of readers together with leading writers and thinkers from all over africa. there are master classes, poetry performances, theater, and mus music. but one year ago, there was also this-- an attack on the nearby

westgale mall. the siege lasted mower days, shocking this nation. >> i just remember this day going home and feeling like a complete sense of nothingness. >> announcer: when it was over, 67 people were dead, among them kofi anonner, a poet and diplomat known throughout the continent. this nigerian novelist remembers meeting him the day before. >> i was so moved and awed and impressed the way one is when you meet a name, a person you only know as a name in a spook, in a school syllabus, and he he is. he is real. he exists. he was very warm and he was very congenial. the day after i met him he was shot dead by terrorists in nairobi. >> reporter: he said the

massacre inspired writers like himself to return to the festival this year. >> coming back here is an act of solidarity with kenya but also an act of solidarity with ghana, an act of sole darrity with kenyan literature. >> brown: the mood was anxious, and the security tight. but in the tented village of storymoja, there was a new sense of purpose-- to remember kofi, and celebrate a new african literature that theoler masters say is flourishing, even amid a growing threat. >> just by being writers, for being noticed, by flooding the bookshops with our works and pushing their works in the face of these throe backs, these religious throe backs, that is already an engagement. >> brown: this playwright and

novelist came of age with kofi in the 1960s, a decade shaped by the hard-won struggle for independence. both were forced into exile for their activism. half a century later, africa still struggles with war, poverty, and disease, and now the ebola outbreak. but a new generation of writers is exploring new themes. >> the younger generation feels liberated from the burden of independence, from the burden of literally creating contemporary society from scratch. they feel they can move in any direction they want. >> brown: at 27, clifton finds inspiration in the many contributions of his hometown nairobi, kenya's capital and largest city, a city with so much crime its nickname is "ni-robbery, and a deeply religious place with traffic and more traffic, but also quiet family sundays in the park. and with dire poverty but also

new wealth, including foreign investment from china. he says these contradictions have freed him from western stereotypes of african literature. so what voice do you want? >> i want to write in my own african voice. it's a voice tahas been influenced by so many sensibilities, some of them global, some of them local. and it's a voice i understand that has a million and one choices. >> brown: at the storymoja festivastorymojafest festival. >> people think of african writing in a narrow sense. i know people who write romance stories or science fiction or graphic novels, we don't think of these people-- even comics. we don't think of those as forms of african writing. >> brown: for many young kenyans discovering literature of any kind remains nearly

impossible because books themselves are so hard to come by. just 2% of kenya's elementary schools have librarys. we visited the five-star academy, a ramshackle building in one of nairobi's largest slums. children living in great poverty, surviving on the obvious enthusiasm of its students and the energy and optimism of their head teacher who grew up here and knows every family. >> the parents i know them. i walk to their houses. i see what they do, how they live. and actually sometimes i shed steers tooers and that's what put me in the spirit of helping these kids. >> brown: storymoja stepped in to help as well with books. today the school has a dozen storybooks for its 250 students, and they're thrilled. do you like reading the storybook. >> yes, i do. >> brown: you do? >> yes. >> brown: why? >> because the storybookbooks he helped the school and helped i, myself, to write a better

composition and to speak a good english. >> brown: the storymoja project also brings writers to schools to share the joy of reading. it's a small but important effort in this country where a year after the terror siege, westgate mall sits empty. no one has been convicted in the attacks. the try of the four suspects is stalled indefinitely. and more recent, smaller attacks have put kenya on edge. writers like clifton say it all remains hard to process. >> i find myself really, really unable to write about terror and westgate, and maybe when i'm writing about other things, i'm writinwriting about terror proby they don't know. >> brown: at storymoja this year, remembering westgate came in a moment of silence for the victims of thes, including one of their own. it's a sentiment shared here as

well as this one. >> something about that encounter last year, also gave me a new understanding of the urgency of literary work. you don't know when your last day is. >> brown: a peaceful fall day, a clear urgency to read and write a new story for kenya and africa. >> ifill: again, the major developments of the day. lawmakers grilled federal health officials on ebola, as a c.d.c. investigation expanded to a second flight taken by an infected dallas nurse. and president obama authorized sending national guard and reserve troops for ebola duty in west africa. >> woodruff: on the newshour online right now, what happens to old web pages when technology changes? a lot of the internet is locked away in clunky or outdated formats that make it difficult,

even impossible to access. on our science page, we look at a search engine that may help unlock old files. all that and more is on our web site, pbs.org/newshour. >> ifill: and that's the newshour for tonight. on friday, what a comet about to graze mars tells us about celestial objects striking earth. i'm gwen ifill. >> woodruff: and i'm judy woodruff. join us, on-line and again here tomorrow evening with mark shields and michael gerson. for all of us at the pbs newshour, thank you and good night. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: ♪ ♪ moving our economy for 160 years. bnsf, the engine that connects us.

>> and with the ongoing support of these institutions and... >> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. captioning sponsored by macneil/lehrer productions captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

this is "nightly business report" with tyler mathisen and susie gharib. brought to you in part by. the street.com, feature stephanie link who shares her investment strategies, stock picks and market insights with action alerts plus the multi-million dollar portfolio she manages with jim cramer, you can learn more at the street.com/nbr. the day after stocks seemed to find their footing after the big stumble. and tonight, one of wall street's biggest bulls stands by his call on the s&p 500 by year end, he will tell you why. missing the mark, google's shares coming in weaker than expected and it could impact the trading day tomorrow. and if you're looking to get aggressive or defensive we h